Alone.
I saw her standing there.
Standing alone separate from me and Raphael.
It was just us 3.
Me. Raphael and Lori.
And a handful of guards in the Sistine Chapel.
Cappella Sistina - without tourists
Lori, my friend, she’s spiritual, but not religious. She sees signs like me and is fascinated with history. She’s educated and what she doesn’t know she asks. Her questions are good. She’s a good traveling companion noticing details I never would. Her lens is different than my own. She’s more political. More of a feminist.
An ENFJ - heavy on the J - to my ENFP.
All week she’s been regaling me with the history of the popes - did you know in one year 7 popes were murdered?- talking reverently of Pope Joan, the woman who legend claims became
Pope in the Middle Ages - but like someone who does online dating who grows discouraged by the number of men who are simply online scouting for sex - she’s downright skeptical of the Pope and the Roman Catholic Church in general.
And yet I saw her there - standing alone off to the side in the chapel.
She felt it.
She wore the smile of angel. Soaking in the spirit. Transcending the here and now.
Raphael, our guide, how appropriate his name, was whispering in my ear. We were talking of Moses. Jesus. The sermon on the mount. The Florentines, Botticelli and his buds, who were called in to paint the frescos below Michelangelos most famous work.
I was smiling ear to ear my face bursting from the sides of my Covid mask, a bubble of laughter, welling up in my throat. The laughter didn’t escape but I knew somehow if it did - it would be a sound of me, age 5, running barefoot in the grass at the end of the day into his arms when my dad came home from work.
My smile could not be contained.
I was flooded with joy.
Flooded with the white light of Father Heaven surging through my body.
I am certain in this moment I glowed.
I don’t do drugs but this is surely what it feels like to be high.
When I do guided meditations I imagine the white light of heaven coming in my crown, roots sprouting from toes connecting me to Mother Earth and yet alone in this “room” alone with just my 2 friends and the Guards I was no longer tethered to the ground, I was floating in the heavens like in Raphael’s painting of Jesus we saw earlier in the hall of the papal residence.
No photos. The sign read as we entered “the room”. The chapel. It feels irreverent to merely call the chapel merely a room, as the lyrics of Jesus Christ Superstar reverberate in my mind. I sing loudly inside my head.
“He’s just a man. And I’ve had so many, men before. ....
I don't know how to take this...
I don't see why he moves me...
And yet...
I want him so.
It’s more than a room I think.
More than a chapel
Twice this year I’ve had this experience of walking on the holiest of grounds - alone. In Siem Reap in February taking in Angkor Wat, the worlds largest religious complex alone just before returning home to Itlay and going into quarantine. And now-
Now.
Leaving the complex in Siem
Reap a troop of hundreds of monkey came rushing from the forest surrounding me and my guide in a moment terrifying and electric.
I feel the same electricity now.
Alone.
Me.
Lori.
Raphael.
Standing in the light.
The guards discretely tell us we must leave.
They are closing.
Lori turns to me.
“I’m vibrating.
I can see that.
She stood to the side in the room feeling it.
Her eyes were open drinking scenes of creation, of life, of death, of hope and despair. Love.
But they could have been closed and she would have sensed it all the same.
It was magic.
This moment alone In the Sistine chapel. Never again might we be so lucky to be here alone.
I have visited the Vatican twice before ushered through the halls like cattle going to market pausing in places to admire the beauty, moments
broken by guards yelling “silenzio”. Such a contrast today, silences instead of the cacophony of people, hot and crowded in a space much smaller than expected, so many paintings it’s impossible to focus on just one.
And now.
Silence.
Silenzio.
In the Sistine Chapel.
(Photo is of the hall after the chapel since we were not allowed photos in the holy place)

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